Texas carried out the execution of Jamaal Howard, 46, at 8:03 p.m. on Wednesday, using a lethal dose of pentobarbital, the same drug that caused a botched injection for Christa Pike in Tennessee last week.
The state’s execution chamber in Huntsville was filled with a tense hush; Howard’s lawyers had petitioned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt the death, citing the drug’s known risks and his intellectual disability at the time of the 2001 capital murder conviction.
The appeals court denied the stay request without comment, and a second motion was also rejected on the same grounds. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a late appeal, leaving the execution to proceed.
Howard was the sixth person to be executed in Texas this year and the 30th death penalty carried out across the United States in 2026. He had been convicted of murdering 42‑year‑old store clerk Vickie Swartout during a 2001 convenience‑store robbery.
A sobering moment came when Howard apologized to Swartout’s family, who watched from a viewing room within arm’s reach of the death chamber; he pleaded for forgiveness and offered a heartfelt, if brief, statement of remorse.
The execution follows a pattern of rapid adjudication, with two additional lethal injections scheduled for later this month in Texas; the state’s use of pentobarbital continues to draw scrutiny from advocacy groups and legal scholars concerned about pharmaceutical expiration and the adequacy of the death penalty protocol.